EN minutes later, with face blanched by terror, and eyes
wild with grief, Lord Arthur Savile rushed from Bentinck House,
crushing his way through the crowd of fur-coated footmen that
stood round the large striped awning, and seeming not to see
or hear anything. The night was bitter cold, and the gas-lamps
round the square flared and flickered in the keen wind; but his
hands were hot with fever, and his forehead burned like fire.
On and on he went, almost with the gait of a drunken man. A policeman
looked curiously at him as he passed, and a beggar, who slouched
from an archway to ask for alms, grew frightened, seeing misery
greater than his own. Once he stopped under a lamp, and looked
at his hands. He thought he could detect the stain of blood already
upon them, and a faint cry broke from his trembling lips.
Murder! that is what the cheiromantist had
seen there. Murder! The very night seemed to know it, and the
desolate wind to howl it in his ear. The dark corners of the
streets were full of it. It grinned at him from the roofs of
the houses.
First he came to the Park, whose sombre woodland
seemed to fascinate him. He leaned wearily up against the railings,
cooling his brow against the wet metal, and listening to the
tremulous silence of the trees. 'Murder! murder!' he kept repeating,
as though iteration could dim the horror of the word. The sound
of his own voice made him shudder, yet he almost hoped that Echo
might hear him, and wake the slumbering city from its dreams.
He felt a mad desire to stop the casual passer-by, and tell him
everything.
Then he wandered across Oxford Street into
narrow, shameful alleys. Two women with painted faces mocked
at him as he went by. From a dark courtyard came a sound of oaths
and blows, followed by shrill screams, and, huddled upon a damp
door-step, he saw the crook- backed forms of poverty and eld.
A strange pity came over him. Were these children of sin and
misery predestined to their end, as he to his? Were they, like
him, merely the puppets of a monstrous show?
And yet it was not the mystery, but the comedy
of suffering that struck him; its absolute uselessness, its grotesque
want of meaning. How incoherent everything seemed! How lacking
in all harmony! He was amazed at the discord between the shallow
optimism of the day, and the real facts of existence. He was
still very young.
After a time he found himself in front of Marylebone
Church. The silent roadway looked like a long riband of polished
silver, flecked here and there by the dark arabesques of waving
shadows. Far into the distance curved the line of flickering
gas-lamps, and outside a little walled-in house stood a solitary
hansom, the driver asleep inside. He walked hastily in the direction
of Portland Place, now and then looking round, as though he feared
that he was being followed. At the corner of Rich Street stood
two men, reading a small bill upon a hoarding. An odd feeling
of curiosity stirred him, and he crossed over. As he came near,
the word 'Murder,' printed in black letters, met his eye. He
started, and a deep flush came into his cheek. It was an advertisement
offering a reward for any information leading to the arrest of
a man of medium height, between thirty and forty years of age,
wearing a billy-cock hat, a black coat, and check trousers, and
with a scar upon his right cheek. He read it over and over again,
and wondered if the wretched man would be caught, and how he
had been scarred. Perhaps, some day, his own name might be placarded
on the walls of London. Some day, perhaps, a price would be set
on his head also.
The thought made him sick with horror. He turned
on his heel, and hurried on into the night.
Where he went he hardly knew. He had a dim
memory of wandering through a labyrinth of sordid houses, of
being lost in a giant web of sombre streets, and it was bright
dawn when he found himself at last in Piccadilly Circus. As he
strolled home towards Belgrave Square, he met the great waggons
on their way to Covent Garden. The white-smocked carters, with
their pleasant sunburnt faces and coarse curly hair, strode sturdily
on, cracking their whips, and calling out now and then to each
other; on the back of a huge grey horse, the leader of a jangling
team, sat a chubby boy, with a bunch of primroses in his battered
hat, keeping tight hold of the mane with his little hands, and
laughing; and the great piles of vegetables looked like masses
of jade against the morning sky, like masses of green jade against
the pink petals of some marvellous rose. Lord Arthur felt curiously
affected, he could not tell why. There was something in the dawn's
delicate loveliness that seemed to him inexpressibly pathetic,
and he thought of all the days that break in beauty, and that
set in storm. These rustics, too, with their rough, good-humoured
voices, and their nonchalant ways, what a strange London they
saw! A London free from the sin of night and the smoke of day,
a pallid, ghost-like city, a desolate town of tombs! He wondered
what they thought of it, and whether they knew anything of its
splendour and its shame, of its fierce, fiery- coloured joys,
and its horrible hunger, of all it makes and mars from morn to
eve. Probably it was to them merely a mart where they brought
their fruits to sell, and where they tarried for a few hours
at most, leaving the streets still silent, the houses still asleep.
It gave him pleasure to watch them as they went by. Rude as they
were, with their heavy, hob-nailed shoes, and their awkward gait,
they brought a little of a ready with them. He felt that they
had lived with Nature, and that she had taught them peace. He
envied them all that they did not know.
By the time he had reached Belgrave Square
the sky was a faint blue, and the birds were beginning to twitter
in the gardens.
[Chapter Three]
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